Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Chavoux Luyt:

 

1.  You wrote:  “While I am totally comfortable that the patriarchal narrative might have first been written down in Akkadian cuniform (even likely, since Abraham came from Mesopotamia), I do not see why the alphabet used in the Wadi el-Hol or Serabit inscriptions (from 19th century BC and ~1850 BC) would not have been developed enough by the time of Moses (14th/12th century BC) for the Torah (including the patriarchal narratives) to be written down in an early alphabetical script. We have evidence of "Asiatics" (which would include the Hebrews) in Egypt using these early alphabets, even in Sinai where the Torah was first given.”

 

There is not a single letter, much less a long, sophisticated composition like the Patriarchal narratives, that is attested as coming out of south-central Canaan in any type of alphabet prior to well into the 1^st millennium BCE:

 

“The character of the early Proto-Canaanite and later Old Canaanite inscriptions is startlingly different than those produced by the sophisticated scribal institutions and elsewhere in Syria.  …The Canaanite linear alphabet in the LB and Iron I Ages…[r]ather than turning up on caches of tablets as did the Akkadian and [Ugaritic] alphabetic cuneiform scripts, the earliest examples of the Canaanite linear alphabet are found on scattered ostraca and vessels at sites throughout Canaan.  Moreover, the Proto-Canaanite and later Old Canaanite inscriptions tend to be quite brief and prosaic….”  Jessica N. Whisenant, “Writing, Literacy, and Textual Transmission:  The Production of Literary Documents in Iron Age Judah and the Composition of the Hebrew Bible” (2008), p. 148.

 

The  o-n-l-y  significant writing of any kind that is attested as coming out of south-central Canaan in the Bronze Age consists of the Amarna Letters, especially in Years 12-14.  That’s it.  And that writing is in Akkadian cuneiform.

 

There’s no way that “the alphabet used in the Wadi el-Hol or Serabit inscriptions” could in the 2^nd millennium BCE handle the Patriarchal narratives, which are a long, sophisticated composition.  Not.

 

2.  You wrote:  “The common usage among ANE scribes of updating both language and place names would give a good enough explanation for any 7th century BC influence, without the need for a convoluted theory of long transmission in cuneiform (when the much simpler alphabet were already known for centuries).”

 

I have not proposed “a convoluted theory of long transmission in cuneiform”.  Rather, my theory is as follows.  In the year after Akhenaten’s death, the former scribe of Jerusalem princeling IR-Heba in desperation offered his scribal services to the tent-dwelling first Hebrews who at that time were living in the northeast Ayalon Valley.  That scribe then duly recorded on 50 cuneiform tablets the Patriarchal narratives, written in Akkadian cuneiform;  but unlike the Amarna Letters, “Canaanite”/pre-Hebrew was used as the language, rather than the Akkadian language.  No Akkadian cuneiform copy was ever made;  there was only the one set of original cuneiform tablets.  King David had chapters 14 and 49 of Genesis transformed into alphabetical Biblical Hebrew in the 10^th century BCE, which is why those two chapters uniquely have so many archaic elements.  But the rest of the Patriarchal narratives was transformed into alphabetical Biblical Hebrew, for the very first time, only in late 7^th century BCE Jerusalem, under King Josiah.  That’s why the spelling and grammar of Hebrew common words in most of the Patriarchal narratives is virtually indistinguishable from the spelling and grammar of Hebrew common words in the second half of II Samuel.  [Not long thereafter those original cuneiform tablets were destroyed by the Babylonians when they sacked Jerusalem and the Temple.  Since that day, we have only had copies in alphabetical Hebrew.] 

 

Whereas modern conventions were used for Hebrew common words, the proper names in the Patriarchal narratives were not updated, nor was the substantive content [except for a handful of exceptions, where a small amount of midrash-type material crept in thanks to various editors over the centuries].  For the most part, the substantive content of the Patriarchal narratives has never changed from Year 14 [when it was composed, shortly before it was written down] until the present.  That is the rational reason why the Patriarchal narratives have  p-i-n-p-o-i-n-t  historical accuracy in describing exactly what historically occurred in Years 12-14, when Judaism was born.  Historically and Biblically, the birth of Judaism occurred in south-central Canaan under trying circumstances when Egypt had a strange, troubled pharaoh, and a firstborn son in the Ayalon Valley [Yapaxu] was making life very difficult for the tent-dwelling first Hebrews.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois